McGinnis: Yes, All Women: A discussion of a social media movement

(In the aftermath of the shootings near the University of California’s Santa Barbara campus, and in light of the killer’s hate-filled manifesto, Pop Culture Editor Jeff McGinnis and Grendel, the mind behind the web series “WTFHistory,” discuss what the event and its aftermath say about our culture in general.)

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JEFF: I have never met a woman who didn’t have a story. The stalker who felt he was entitled to their affection. The hate-filled diatribes when a pass was made and they turned it down. The inappropriate grabs from men who suffered no consequences. The times they were blamed for a man’s misconduct toward them. The assaults. The constant fear.

The stories which flooded Twitter in the hours after the Santa Barbara shooting on May 25 were all too painfully familiar. As was the response: “Not all men!” “You deserved it!” “Feminazi!” And on and on. So much defensiveness. So much anger. So little empathy. Why? Why do people refuse to see outside themselves for even a sliver of understanding?

GRENDEL: I was horrified when I heard about what happened. But I wish I could say I was more surprised. This wasn’t an isolated incident: this was a hate crime and it was one of many. Elliot Rodger, the shooter, had a 141-page-long manifesto where he outlined his thoughts on women. He did not believe that women were as mentally capable, or as in control of themselves as men. And his evidence of this was that women were turning him down. He did not believe that women should have the right to choose their own romantic or sexual partners, simply because when they chose, they did not choose him. And he wanted to punish them for it.

This was a hate crime because he was a violent misogynist. He wanted to terrify and push women into what he considered “their place.”

I’m amazed that he could have been so willing to assign the blame to women and so unwilling to consider for even a moment that maybe it was not their problem, but his. The lack of introspection is astounding. And this is very symptomatic of an attitude that is gaining an alarming amount of ground these days: the insistence that women have too much power and that men are at a disadvantage because of it. Not only is this untrue, it’s an increasingly harmful and dangerous worldview.

JEFF: The pity of it is that this kind of thought process is not confined to psychopaths like Rodger. We see this blind hatred and lack of personal culpability among men in everyday life on the internet. As noted, look at the responses to women posting under the #yesallwomen hashtag — the vitriol and hatred the killer spewed in his manifesto is, horrifically, not uncommon.

And yet, many would prefer not to engage in that aspect of this event. Easier to simply dismiss him as a psychopath, instead of actually dealing with the awful fact that his actions, as you noted, have roots in deeply held prejudices in society. Prejudices that misogynists simply seem to cling to tighter the more women struggle against them.

GRENDEL: And the #yesallwomen is turning into an amazing social media movement. It’s addressing the way that women’s shared stories of harassment have been treated. When women share stories of the harassment and misogyny they face in daily life, they are often interrupted by a man — in person or online — who insists “Yes but that’s not ALL men.” And no, that’s right, it isn’t all men. But it’s an awful lot of men. #yesallwomen was started to answer that. Maybe not all men are misogynists. But all women have faced misogyny, harassment or violence because of their gender. Usually for no other reason than existing while female.

By saying “Not all men,” people are yanking the discussion away from women, centering it back on men, when — in this instance — they simply aren’t the focus. Because even if it isn’t all men, isn’t it important that men who aren’t that way listen to the stories of men who are and help learn how to make it better? The Internet movement of Men’s Rights Activists don’t seem to think so.

JEFF: I can only hope in the days to come, the conversation that is going on right now continues and deepens into some sense of understanding for those who have a reflexively defensive attitude against the movement. That it opens their eyes to the fact that there is a disturbing difference in the human experience — that women are forced to play by a set of rules that is infinitely more complicated and dangerous than men do. The pity is, though, that lasting societal change doesn’t usually come in a sudden burst, but through painful struggle — a struggle that, if the “Men’s Rights” response is any indication, has only just begun.

GRENDEL: As we have these conversations in the following weeks and days, it’s vital to remember a few things. While this may have been a product of mental illness, it cannot be blamed solely on mental illness. Being mentally ill does not make one a violent killer, and neither does it make one unaccountable for ones actions. This was a man who openly hated women. He thought that women ought to cater to his whims. And the media with which he interacted encouraged this belief. Nobody ever told him that he might be the one in the wrong. And until people start saying so — that the world was not made for straight, white men alone — and listening when people raise their voices, nothing is going to change. But it can change, and it will. We just need to work towards something better. Something safer for everyone.

McGinnis: College student educates and entertains on YouTube

“Bloodbaths. Sadists. Nobility. 16th century Hungary. The only thing this story is missing is vampires. Oh, wait — we got those, too? Aww, score!”

— Grendel, “WTFhistory”

History is boring.

Well, that’s what generations of kids have been taught to think —thanks to dull, monotonous classes where they’re lectured about Important Events. But if they did even a little digging, they’d learn that the story of humanity is full of more gratuitous violence, scandalous sex, thrilling events and compelling characters than an all-day “Game of Thrones” marathon. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s fascinating.

That’s what the woman who calls herself Grendel really wants to teach people with her wildly entertaining Web series “WTFhistory.” And yes, that stands for exactly what you think it stands for.

“People think it’s boring because they’re force-fed it in school, in the most stupid, awful way to do it possible. And anyone who has ever actually looked at history, beyond what they’ve been assigned, immediately found that it’s way cooler than just that,” Grendel said in an interview with Toledo Free Press Star.

Being mindful of privacy and security issues on the internet, Grendel only goes by her “Beowulf”-inspired pseudonym on the show. But as a talk with the young college student reveals, this is really the only real difference between who she is on “WTF” and who she is in real life. The individual that thousands of YouTube viewers have met — intelligent, funny, insightful and, above all, passionate — that’s her, plain and simple. And it is that passion that led to the incredible volume of knowledge she shares on an (almost) weekly basis.

“I’ve always gone on research binges and just looked up every single thing about a given topic, until I could literally find nothing else. And that happened, incidentally, because I have more gruesome interests a lot of the time,” Grendel said with a laugh. “It tends toward a lot of history stuff, because history is freaking brutal. What ended up happening is, I ended up picking up a lot of things accidentally and it ended up being a lot of history knowledge.”

The story goes that one day about a year ago, Grendel was on the phone with a friend, complaining about her pal’s “Twilight” addiction. Naturally, that segued into a discussion of vampires. Next thing you know …

“Somehow, it comes around to Dracula, to Vlad the Impaler, and I said, ‘Well, you know, it’s theorized that that might not be who Dracula’s based on.’ And she said, ‘Well, what are you talking about?’ So I start going on this rant about Elizabeth Bathory,” Grendel noted. “So I’m sitting there, making cupcakes, talking about this woman who murdered, brutally slaughtered people.

Grendel

“When I finished my rant — which is actually almost exactly what ended up being the video — she said, ‘You should put this online.’ So, I did.”

Her new show already had a name, too. “I’m like, ‘What the f***? History, man!’” Grendel said. “And a few minutes later, when she was convincing me to make a YouTube channel, she brought that back up as a title.”

The first episode, “Bathory,” was posted shortly afterward, and it featured all the hallmarks that would quickly become part of the show’s signature style. Every video consists almost entirely of Grendel simply addressing the camera and talking about the subject at hand. But she does so with a depth of knowledge and hilariously vulgar sense of humor that makes each discussion a delight. (She also keeps an accompanying Tumblr page — http://wtfhistory.tumblr.com — updated pretty much daily.)

The first few installments came and went with little fanfare. Then, one day, Grendel noticed the “Bathory” video had a dramatic rise in its view count. Thanks to a buddy of hers, “WTFhistory” had gone viral.

“A friend of mine has a very popular Tumblog, because she does a lot of really cool fat-positive, body-positive, and a lot of fashion stuff,” Grendel said. “She’s a fantastic human being. I’m so in awe of her all the time. But I stuck the tag on a Bathory post that I saw come up, and she said, ‘Hey, this is cool!’ and reblogged it.

“And then, literally in the course of a weekend, it blew up. And I’m just sitting at my computer, freaking out. And my roommates are saying, ‘Shut up already!’”

It’s a bit ironic that the Bathory post has become the most popular video on her channel, Grendel noted, since now she kind of hates it. Oh, don’t misunderstand — there’s nothing wrong with the video, really. She just grows to hate most anything she has already posted.

“I never understood how actors couldn’t stand watching their own movies until I started this Web show,” she said. “I love my video for about a week after I post it. And after that, I never, ever, ever want to see it again. Partially because it takes so long to film that I’m just freaking sick of it, and partially because I see all the things that I could have done better.”

She’s being too hard on herself, of course. Each video remains a fascinating and entertaining viewing experience, though it’s clear Grendel’s learning and evolving as she goes on with the production. Newer videos feature more costume changes and tighter scripts, but the core of the show — Grendel’s witty perspective on historical events, both little- and well-known — remains wholly intact.

Some of the best episodes, though, have a wider focus than just one person or era. In one two-parter, Grendel relayed the history of a number of cosmetics while appearing on camera without makeup and applying each layer as she discussed it.

The end result was a show that not only featured a slew of interesting facts, but also acted as an analysis of all that modern women are expected to do to be “presentable.”

“It’s because we live in a society that teaches women that we’re not dressed without it. You feel like you look sloppy without it,” Grendel said. “I knew I wanted to do something about cosmetics at some point, and I thought that would be a really cool format, to actually use my face to present it. And also because I’d been getting messages from some people saying that they thought I was so pretty and so gorgeous. And I thought, ‘Okay, you know a very large chunk of this is artifice, right?’”

In fact, the tendency of some audience members to place so much focus on such superficial issues has disappointed Grendel a bit.

“I get pissed off, quite frankly, when I feel like people are watching my videos for the wrong reasons,” she said. “I’ve had people who — as sick as it is, I suppose I should expect it, because I’m a girl on the Internet who’s daring to do a thing — but someone on YouTube said, ‘You should do an episode in a bikini!’ And I’m thinking, ‘How about no?’

“That’s what disappoints me — people who I feel like [they] watch me because they think I’m a pretty girl, and they don’t care what I’m saying.”

On the flip side, though, nothing tickles her more than when her viewers take the initiative to learn more and add to the discussion. “I’m really pleased when people take what I’m ranting about and go look up things on their own. When they correct me, because I had an inaccuracy,” Grendel said.

“I don’t want you to listen to only me. I have a disclaimer on my blog, saying that I’m biased, and that I’m one frickin’ teenage college student, doing this by herself. I say ‘we’ at WTFhistory, because I like to refer to myself in the imperial sense. That is literally it. There is no one else, I do this alone. So, I can be wrong. My sources can be stupid, bad sources. I want my followers to look into it, and to call me on it, and learn more about it in the process on their own.”

It’s that give-and-take with viewers that spurs Grendel on, and she says she’ll continue work on the series as long as it continues to give her that kind of enjoyment.

“Part of me says, as long as people are paying attention to me,” Grendel said, with a chuckle, when asked how long “WTF” will keep going. “But part of me says, it really is as long as I’m having fun with it. Because, I bitch about it, and it’s a pain in my butt, but I love it. I really love when people comment, and are so surprised, and are so thrilled.

“I really enjoy educating people in this format. I like it because they’re coming to me willingly. I feel like they’re hungry for some information, or they’re interested, if they found my Tumblr or my channel. So it’s not like they’re being force-fed some really dry, boring, textbook stuff. They’re finding out some interesting new things that maybe they can apply to whatever they’re doing in school, or in life. Maybe not. But I feel like they’re coming for history for its own sake. And that’s something that doesn’t happen nearly enough.”